Excursus. Failed States: the Trial-and-error of Contemporary Exercises in Constitution-making and Nation-building

10.1163/ej.9789004158351.i-136.34

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Chapter Summary

The various ventures in constitution-making and nation-building by the occupying power could be of only marginal influence or authority in the subsequent historical unfolding. The international, UN-based intervention in 1947, with the partition and the two-state formula of governance came far too late historically. One might add that the actual partition of Palestine that the U.N. proposed amounted to a professional constitution- maker's nightmare with geographically dispersed and separated territorial entities with only the most fragile of direct land connections between them. Kurt Joess's Ballet, The Green Table, set in the coolly cynical international negotiations of the between-the-two-Wars period when the rival players cast lots for the high and the low depicts the professional diplomats of the era engaged in a children's game of musical chairs around the traditional baize-covered table.